Function Settings; Line Printers Versus Page Printers; Line Printers And Processing - Canon BJC-70 User Manual

FUNCTION Settings

The printer's FUNCTION settings allow you to set the default printer
configuration settings, such as horizontal print position, text lines per page,
character sets, and so on. See Chapter 9, Customizing the Printer, for details.

Line Printers Versus Page Printers

Line Printers
Your Canon BJC-70 Color Bubble Jet Printer is an example of a line
printer. Line printers, sometimes called band printers, process and print
information one line (band) at a time. The information sent from the
computer to the printer indicates exactly how each line should look and
where each dot is positioned. This information is similar to a bitmapped
graphic that specifies positions of individual dots of ink.
Page Printers
Page printers process and print information one page at a time. The
information sent from the computer to the printer is sometimes in simple
ASCII code, or more often, in a page description language. This
information is a set of instructions that the printer must interpret to
determine where it should position each dot. Some common page
description languages include PostScript, CaPSL, and HP PCL.

Line Printers and Processing

With line printers almost all of the processing burden falls on the
computer. The printer needs to do very little additional processing of the
information it receives from the computer—it simply executes the
instructions it receives. This means a line printer needs very little
processing power and memory.
Because most of the processing takes place on the computer, the speed of
the computer's processor (386, 486, Pentium) and the amount of random
access memory (RAM) on your computer have a significant influence on
printing speed.
The faster the processor, and the more RAM you have, the faster you can
print on your BJC-70 Color Bubble Jet Printer.
Chapter 2
31
Setting Up the Printer